While both companies have confirmed the deal, they haven’t disclosed the amount. A report by Axios suggests Facebook bough GIPHY for $400 million. GIPHY’s API is quite popular amongst social networks. Facebook already uses it in its other products such as Messenger and WhatsApp for GIF search. Several other social networks such as Twitter, Reddit, and Slack also rely on GIPHY’s APIs for their GIF-related features In a statement, Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram, said GIPHY will continue to operate its library, and developers will have same access to GIPHY’s APIs as before: Despite Facebook’s assurance, there are already privacy-related questions on how Facebook will handle user data.
— dom hofmann (@dhof) May 15, 2020
— ? (@can) May 15, 2020 Facebook’s record suggests that the company eventually wants all its products to be able to share data with each other. We’ve already seen it with WhatsApp and Instagram’s integration with the blue app. So, while the social network is promising to keep things as-is for now, we’ll have to wait and watch if becomes null and void in a few years.
